Home » Posts tagged 'Elizabeth Vos'

Tag Archives: Elizabeth Vos

With Julian Assange facing possible extradition from Britain to the U.S. for publishing classified secrets, Elizabeth Vos reflects on the parallel but divergent case of a notorious Chilean dictator.

Eight months from now one of the most consequential extradition hearings in recent history will take place in Great Britain when a British court and the home secretary will determine whether WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange will be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges for the crime of journalism.

Twenty-one years ago, in another historic extradition case, Britain had to decide whether to send former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain for the crime of mass murder.

Pinochet in 1982 motorcade. (Ben2, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

In October 1998, Pinochet, whose regime became a byword for political killings, “disappearances” and torture, was arrested in London while there for medical treatment.

A judge in Madrid, Baltasar Garzón, sought his extradition in connection with the deaths of Spanish citizens in Chile.

Citing the aging Pinochet’s inability to stand trial, the United Kingdom in 2000 ultimately prevented him from being extradited to Spain where he would have faced prosecution for human rights abuses.

At an early point in the proceedings, Pinochet’s lawyer, Clare Montgomery, made an argument in his defense that had nothing to do with age or poor health.

“States and the organs of state, including heads of state and former heads of state, are entitled to absolute immunity from criminal proceedings in the national courts of other countries,” the Guardianquoted Montgomery as saying. She argued that crimes against humanity should be narrowly defined within the context of international warfare, as the BBC reported.

Sa …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ecuador President Threatens to Decide Assange’s Fate Over Scandal

April 3, 2019

Ecuador President Threatens to Decide Assange’s Fate Over Scandal

Ecuador’s president is threatening to soon decide on Julian Assange’s refuge after his government falsely accused WikiLeaks of publishing files about a scandal that threatens to bring the president down, as Elizabeth Vos reports.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said Tuesday he would decide “in the short term” the fate of Julian Assange after claiming that WikiLeaks had “repeatedly violated” the terms of Assange’s asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy by commenting on a scandal linking a Panamanian investment company with Moreno and his family.

Those conditions, or protocol, were imposed by Ecuador on Assange in March 2018 and bar him from commenting publicly on political matters in exchange for being allowed to remain a refugee in the embassy. Assange never agreed to the protocol, which contradicts international refugee law guaranteeing freedom of expression.

“Ecuador”s President Lenin Moreno stated today that Assange has ‘violated the ‘conditions’ of his asylum’ and that he will ‘take a decision’ ‘in the short term” after @WikiLeaks reported on the existence of the #INAPapers offshore corruption scandal wracking his government,” WikiLeaks tweeted Tuesday.

WikiLeaks had reported about the scandal allegedly involving Moreno and his family with INA Investments Corp, though WikiLeaks has not published any documents related to the case. Moreno’s spokesman, however, has implied that WikiLeaks has. A search of Wikileaks’ website shows no such files.

According to Telesur English the scandal came to light in February when Ecuadorian legislator Ronny Aleaga told reporters he had “received a dossier anonymously filled with documents that will implicate Lenin Moreno and his family in alleged crimes of corruption, perjury and money laundering.” The dossier has come to be known as the INA Papers.

Moreno: Feeling the heat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Media Bias Fact Check’ Smears WikiLeaks, Supports Western Propaganda Machine

January 30, 2019

‘Media Bias Fact Check’ Smears WikiLeaks, Supports Western Propaganda Machine

With the latest US-backed coup underway in Venezuela and Roger Stone’s arrest as much an exercise in theater as the rest of his political career, one may wonder what a critique of Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC) and similar sites could contribute to the conversation in our tempestuous news cycle.

We examine the issue now, as attacks made on the credibility of independent media outlets damage the ability of independent journalists across the board to have their voices heard.

In order to provide context for this report, we must reintroduce Disobedient Media’s recent report on multiple attacks against this outlet stemming from proxies of the Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative was revealed to have been a front organization for British intelligence, and partnered with groups including the Atlantic Council in order to push neo-McCarthyist propaganda.

Within days of this outlet’s coverage of the Integrity Initiative, the website ‘Media Bias Fact Check‘ produced an updated page appraising Disobedient Media as right-leaning, supportive of conspiracy theories, and “supportive of Guccifer 2.0.” In characterizing Disobedient Media as a hard-right news source, a smear lands on not only the writers producing work with this outlet, but also those whose stories this outlet has covered.

The first article cited by Media Bias Fact Check in its report on Disobedient Media is a clearly-labeled opinion piece authored by this writer, which focused on the multiple unprosecuted felonies committed by former Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, and the unaddressed election-rigging of the congressional race in Florida’s 23rd district. In MBFC’s opinion, an opinion piece which decries documented crimes that have cheated progressives of a voice is an example of hyperbole. MBFC omits the fact that the article in question and many other opinion pieces penned by this author have shown clear support for progressives and greens, not the right-wing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Integrity Initiative And Affiliates Behind Multiple Attacks On Disobedient Media

January 16, 2019

Last month, an anonymous hacking group published a slew of documents that revealed a vast operation by the Integrity Initiative and its parent group, the Institute for Statecraft. The organizations and their slew of affiliates sought to propagandize a Western audience by crafting false narratives, creating smears out of whole cloth, and in all of these efforts, backed by the UK intelligence community. In other words, make psychological warfare sound like journalism, while accusing Russia of the same.

The influence of the group and its contacts stretches from news outlets in Europe to Washington DC insiders to Silicon Valley. Multiple reports published by Grayzone, the World Socialist Website and others map this infinite array of relationships, which we will not endeavor to outline in full here.

The revelation is not merely an embarrassment to some factions within the British intelligence community, but represents a glimpse into the inner workings of the propaganda machine that keeps the plutocratic class in control of the public.

John Pilger once wrote of Edward Bernays, the founder of modern propaganda: “Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government.”

It is this same invisible controlling force that has been exposed at work in the anonymous hack of the Integrity Initiative.

Grayzone’s Mohamed Elmaazi and Max Blumenthal summarized the scandal, writing:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Guardian’s Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear

December 6, 2018

The Guardian’s Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear

Regular followers of WikiLeaks-related news are at this point familiar with the multiple serious infractions of journalistic ethics by Luke Harding and the Guardian, especially (though not exclusively) when it comes to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. However, another individual at the heart of this matter is far less familiar to the public. That man is Fernando Villavicencio, a prominent Ecuadorian political activist and journalist, director of the USAID-funded NGO Fundamedios and editor of online publication FocusEcuador.

Most readers are also aware of the Guardian’s recent publication of claims that Julian Assange met with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on three occasions. This has now been definitively debunked by Fidel Narvaez, the former Consul at Ecuador’s London embassy between 2010 and 2018, who says Paul Manafort has never visited the embassy during the time he was in charge there. But this was hardly the first time the outlet published a dishonest smear authored by Luke Harding against Assange. The paper is also no stranger to publishing stories based on fabricated documents.

In May, Disobedient Media reported on the Guardian’s hatchet-job relating to ‘Operation Hotel,’ or rather, the normal security operations of the embassy under former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. That hit-piece, co-authored by Harding and Dan Collyns, asserted among other things that (according to an anonymous source) Assange hacked the embassy’s security system. The allegation was promptly refuted by Correa as “absurd” in an interview with The Intercept, and also by WikiLeaks as an “anonymous libel” with which the Guardian had “gone too far this time. We’re suing.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange Prosecution Will Focus On Chelsea Manning Era Releases, Not DNC Emails

November 26, 2018

November 25, 2018 Elizabeth Vos

It seems that the shades have finally been ripped off of the persecution of Julian Assange. Fallen by the wayside is the pretense used to justify his arbitrary detention: allegations of sexual misconduct, of Russian involvement, and of aiding Trump’s ascension to the Presidency.

Gone is the pretense that it is not the rabid wolves of the US and UK military state baying, slavering for Assange’s blood. Former intelligence assets in the guise of “journalists” openly call for Assange’s arrest.

Recent reports have indicated that formerly secret charges pending against Julian Assange will focus on material relating to Chelsea Manning and the earliest releases published by WikiLeaks. Alternatively, on WikiLeaks’ Vault7 releases in March 2017 or on the help he and his organisation gave to Edward Snowden to get the NSA whistleblower to safe asylum.

This latest news directly counters allegations published by Russiagate hysterics, who suggested the charges would relate to WikiLeaks’ 2016 publications of the DNC and John Podesta emails. Nonetheless, we can assume that in the coming days and months, establishment hacks will pivot and attack Assange just as loudly and abhorrently as they always have. Few of them will bother to remind their readers that the campaign emails of a political party are not US Government documents, are not classified Secret or Top Secret, and are therefore not going to be the subject of a federal prosecution in the Alexandria Division of the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), where the jury pool is selected from a population with the highest concentration of US intelligence and defence industry employees in the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Opinion: Where Does The Latest Social Media Purge Leave The State Of Social Discourse?

October 21, 2018

Disobedient Media previously reported the tightening stranglehold of censorship across social media. Unfortunately, events that have taken place since the publication of this writer’s opinion that Julian Assange was the first domino to fall in a series of increasingly draconian censorship measures have far exceeded even this author’s worst expectations.

The crackdown has seen the involvement of organizations that have a documented history of pay to play behaviorand are backed by groups including the Chinese Communist Party in collaboration with Western establishment organizations including NATO. In this way, renewed drives for censorship represent a strange new cooperation between transatlantic internationalist groups and China, as the former reacted negatively to the rise of populist and nationalist movements in the West which have disrupted their control.

Before we discuss the details of the latest social media purge, though, we ask: Is the unabashed, coordinated censorship of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms an illegal affront to freedom of speech?

In the case of Twitter, at least, we do appear to have an affirmative answer to the question. As CNBC reported earlier this year, a Federal judge ruled that Donald Trump could not legally block Twitter users. The judgment in effect defined the platform as a “public forum” which may be regulated by government to defend First Amendment-protected free speech. CNBC wrote:

“Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in her ruling that Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing certain Americans from viewing his tweets on @realDonaldTrump.The social media platform, Buchwald said, is a “designated public forum” from which Trump cannot exclude individual plaintiffs. She rejected an argument by the Justice Department that the president had a right to block Twitter followers because of his “associational freedoms.” [Emphasis added]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forensicator’s Analysis Supports Assange’s Statements On The DNC, Podesta Emails

September 25, 2018

Disobedient Media has closely followed the work of the Forensicator, whose analysis has shed much light on the publications by the Guccifer 2.0 persona for over a year. In view of the more recent work published by the Forensicator regarding potential media collusion with Guccifer 2.0, we are inclined to revisit an interview given by WikiLeaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange in August of 2016, prior to the publication of the Podesta Emails in October, and the November US Presidential election.

During the interview, partially transcribed below, Assange makes a number of salient points on the differentiation between the thousands of pristine emails WikiLeaks received, and those which had surfaced in other US outlets by that date. Though Assange does not name the Guccifer 2.0 persona directly throughout the interview, he does name multiple outlets which publicized Guccifer 2.0’s documents.

The significance of revisiting Assange’s statements is the degree to which his most significant claim is corroborated or paralleled by the Forensicator’s analysis. This is of enhanced import in light of allegations by Robert Mueller (not to mention the legacy media), despite a total absence of evidence, that Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks’s source of the DNC and Podesta emails.

This author previously discussed the possibility that Assange’s current isolation might stem in part from the likelihood that upon expulsion from the embassy, Julian Assange could provide evidential proof that the DNC emails and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks were not sourced from Russia, or backed by the Kremlin, all without disclosing the identity of their source.

Julian Assange told RT: “In the US media there has been a deliberate conflation between DNC leaks, which is what we’ve been publishing, and DNC hacks, of the US Democratic Party which have occurred over the last two years, by their own admission…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

All Russiagate Roads Lead To London As Evidence Emerges Of Joseph Mifsud’s Links To UK Intelligence

April 6, 2018

Over the last few months, Professor Joseph Mifsud has become a feather in the cap for those pushing the Trump-Russia narrative. He is characterized as a “Russian” intelligence asset in mainstream press, despite his declarations to the contrary. However, evidence has surfaced that suggests Mifsud was anything but a Russian spy, and may have actually worked for British intelligence. This new evidence culminates in the ground-breaking conclusion that the UK and its intelligence apparatus may be responsible for the invention of key pillars of the Trump-Russia scandal. If true, this would essentially turn the entire RussiaGate debacle on its head.

To give an idea of the scope of this report, a few central points showing the UK connections with the central pillars of the Trump-Russia claims are included here, in the order of discussion in this article:

Mifsud allegedly discussed that Russia has ‘dirt’ on Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails’ with George Papadopoulos in London in April 2016.
The following month, Papadopoulos spoke with Alexander Downer, Australia’s ambassador to the UK, about the alleged Russian dirt on Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky Kensington bar, according to The Times. In late July 2016, Downer shared his tip with Australian intelligence officials who forwarded it to the FBI.
Robert Goldstone, a key figure in the ‘Trump Tower’ part of the RussiaGate narrative, sent Donald Trump Jr. an email claiming Russia wanted to help the Trump campaign. He is a British music promoter.
Christopher Steele, ex-MI6, who worked as an MI6 agent in Moscow until 1993 and ran the Russia desk at MI6 HQ in London between 2006 and 2009. He produced the totally unsubstantiated ‘Steele Dossier’ of Trump-Russia allegations, with funding from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Retrospective Look At The Work WikiLeaks Made Possible As Assange Remains Silenced

April 4, 2018

An argument is only as good as the evidence it cites. For this reason, WikiLeaks embodies one the most significant information armories in existence. John Pilger spoke to this importance when he compared WikiLeaks with a mainstream press that he called nothing more than “state-stenography.” In the wake of news of Assange being cut off from the outside world by order of the Ecuadorian government, Pilger also wrote that the “silencing of Assange is the silencing of us all.”

After this author and other independent journalists, whistleblowers and friends of Assange took part in a ten-hour vigil to call for the journalist’s freedom of speech to be upheld under the banner #ReconnectJulian, many have continued to publicize the injustice of his inability to speak and have contact with the outside world on top of his ongoing arbitrary confinement.

As this writer previously noted, a topic of discussion during the online vigil centered on the irreplaceable impact WikiLeaks has had through the documentation of evidence of corruption and war-crimes. The consequences of WikiLeaks’ most well-known accomplishments cannot be overstated.

In a 2016 conversation with Democracy Now, Julian Assange described WikiLeaks:

“….WikiLeaks has become the rebel library of Alexandria. It is the single most significant collection of information that doesn’t exist elsewhere, in a searchable, accessible, citable form, about how modern institutions actually behave. And it’s gone on to set people free from prison, where documents have been used in their court cases; hold the CIA accountable for renditions programs; feed into election cycles, which have resulted in the termination of, in some case—or contributed to the termination of governments, in some cases, taken the heads of intelligence agencies, ministers of defense and so on. So, you know, our civilization can only be as good as our knowledge of what our civilization is. We can’t possibly hope to reform that which we do not understand.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inhuman: What The Establishment’s Bot Hysteria Reveals About Their View Of The Masses

March 12, 2018

The only apparatus that could hope to match the soullessness of the psychopaths that run our planet is manifested in the rise of artificial intelligence, paired with robots, which press reports indicate will replace vast sections of the beleaguered human workforce within decades.

It is particularly ironic, then, that the plutocratic class has developed an intense phobia of Twitter bots. In this author’s view, their intense abhorrence can be read in Jungian terms as the subconscious projection of the establishment’s shadow. That is, the more the elite protest about the use of bots on social media, the more they are likely to use such technologies and similar tools to attack the very human public that they constantly misidentify as inhuman bots.

The concept for this article arose after a minor furor erupted on Twitter regarding an application designed by Robhat Labs intended to identify bots disseminating political propaganda, which was found to have been incorrectly classifying many real human social media accounts as bots, myself included. Excellent independent media thinkers have reported extensively on the issue of false attribution of dissent to Russian bots, including Adam Carter with his coverage of Hamilton 68, published via Disobedient Media.

The establishment’s deranged fantasies regarding Twitter trolls culminated recently in Robert Mueller’s indictment of members of a Russian click-bait farm. Disobedient Media and other independent media figures were quick to point out that the indictment was an utter joke.

The establishment’s hysteria regarding bots on social media unintentionally provides key insight into their view of the masses they have abused for so long. Calling your opponent a bot dehumanizes them from the start. It strips the subject of the essence of their humanity, their right to free speech and dissent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Opinion: Fearless Adversarial Journalism Doesn’t Work When You Are Funded By A Billionaire

February 18, 2018

Disobedient Media previously opined on the dagger-in-the-back publication of a hit piece against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange just one day after a UK magistrate, with blatant conflict of interest in the matter, shot down his legal representatives’ attempt to finally free him from the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy.

What that article did not address was the patently obvious terminal illness suffered by The Intercept. That is, the outlet claims to publish “fearless, adversarial” reporting, while it is funded by a billionaire. Ken Silverstein, formerly employed at The Intercept and by Omidyar’s First Look Media, has described endemic problems at the outlet that have risen directly out of Omidyar’s leadership or lack thereof.

The fundamental problem facing The Intercept is not ultimately about how or why the outlet published a smear specifically timed to cut support away from Assange, even though that is in and of itself despicable. It’s that doing so acts in support of the very deep state and moneyed, military interests that The Intercept purports to critique “fearlessly.”

Adding to a sense of betrayal of The Intercept’s principals in the wake of the outlet’s hit-piece is the fact that a number of writers at the publication are by all accounts on good terms with Assange, and have worked with mutual supporters including the superb Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi. Maurizi collaborated with Wikileaks on the verification of documents for many years, and worked with Glenn Greenwald on preparation for the disclosure of the Snowden files.

Adding to the years of support Greenwald has shown Assange, the Wikileaks co-founder also sent Wikileaks’ own Sarah Harrison to the aid of Snowden after he was marooned in Hong Kong in 2013, an act which Stefania Maurizi revealed very likely cost the publisher his freedom.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Op-Ed: Et Tu, The Intercept? Smear Of Assange Murderously Timed

February 16, 2018

Less than 48 hours after a UK judge ruled against Julian Assange’s legal team in their efforts to free him from the Ecuadoran embassy, The Intercept published a disingenuous and sloppy character assassination against the Wikileaks Editor-In-Chief.

The timing of the article’s publication acted to brutally counter growing support for Assange that arose in the wake of a clearly unjust UK ruling. Essentially, the publication of the smear attempted to deflect attention from the revelation of corruption in the ongoing detention of Assange, and to assassinate his character in the process.

The Intercept’s decision to publish the article at such a time unfortunately serves to characterize the outlet as a servant of the same US deep state that The Intercept has gained a reputation for – at least in theory – opposing.

The serious errors contained in The Intercept’s character assassination of the Wikileaks co-founder were quickly dismantled earlier today by independent journalists including Suzie Dawson, Caitlin Johnstone, HA Goodman and others. That Micah Lee, who has engaged in continual attacks against Assange on social media, would be allowed to contribute to an article of this kind represents a fundamental conflict of interest in the work, not to mention the factual inaccuracies and assumptions it makes without so much as pausing to take a breath.

The claims made in The Intercept’s hit piece regarding messages sent privately by Wikileaks’ Twitter account were disingenuous on multiple levels, beginning with the assumption that Assange was the sole author of the texts. The inference is clearly stated in the article, destroying any shred of journalistic integrity that might be expected from a well-respected news outlet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook Cracks Down On Independent Media, Under Guise Of ‘Enhancing Relationships’

January 30, 2018

January 30, 2018

Nothing could have more perfectly exemplified the establishment’s use of Orwellian Newspeak than Facebook’s latest move to censor independent thought under the pretense of caring about the emotional wellbeing of the masses. The media giant has been documented live-streaming murders, suicides, rapes, and abuse. Despite this, The New York Post reported that Facebook officially stated they were ‘unable to stop live-streaming suicides.’ But, trust them, they care about your mental health, and that’s why they don’t want you to read certain news stories.

A recent press report on the matter stated: “Facebook said it’s changing the formula that determines users’ news feeds by decreasing business and media posts and focusing more on personal connections.” However, in reality, the changes seem to have been used to specifically target anti-establishment news sources.

Though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enthused regarding the changes, the company’s shareholders appeared less impressed with the news. According to CNBC, Facebook shares fell by four percent at market the morning after Zuckerberg’s announcement of the new policy. Stocks fell during the first day by following the announcement by 6.1% which was reported to have amounted to a $3.3 billion loss.

Despite this, Zuckerberg appeared totally unfazed by the stock price drop, and openly admitted that the changes would lead to an overall decline in user engagement.

The Guardian’s coverage of the news not only chided Zuckerberg for not having made the move earlier, while also directly identifying the core of the real impetus behind the changes, which had nothing to do with bringing you closer to your family. The Guardian’s writing on the issue reveals that the real reason for the changes is in order to actively censor what the legacy press outlet deems to be “fake news” that “interfered” in the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Senate Passes Warrantless Spying Reauthorization Bill

January 19, 2018

Disobedient Media previously reported on the many issues that establishment press misrepresents or ignores. One of the issues discussed in that report included the overt hypocrisy displayed by allegedly anti-Trump Democrats who nonetheless voted in favor of increased warrantless spying powers.

That trend continued earlier today, when the Senate voted to pass the extremely controversial bill which would reauthorize FISA, and which many claim would result in increased warrantless spying powers for an already grotesquely powerful NSA.

Just Security wrote on the misrepresentation of the bill, relating that despite many lawmaker’s claim that the powers granted to the NSA would not target Americans, in reality, the law would permit exactly that. They also noted that the bill would hardly be used to target only terrorists or enemy combatants: “The NSA’s own slides on Section 702 describe it as collecting on topics such as “energy” and “political affairs.”

This author has also addressed many issues stemming from the monstrous power of the NSA in DecipherYou, an ongoing collaboration with Suzie Dawson. Dawson is a journalist, activist, and current leader of the Internet Party of New Zealand.

Establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle also prevented Rand Paul’s attempt to filibuster the legislation. Press reports also related: “Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon tried to filibuster Tuesday night on the Senate floor during a debate over the government’s massive surveillance powers, but colleagues didn’t let them.”

Eric Geller
✔@ericgeller

The Senate has passed a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Bill now goes to Trump’s desk. https://twitter.com/senategopfloor/status/954048573343195136 …

12:52 PM – Jan 18, 2018

The bill in question overcame another hurdle when it was passed by the Senate earlier today. CNN reported: “The Senate approved a six-year extension of the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Thursday. The vote was 65-34. The bill now heads to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: Elizabeth Vos

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Latest Posts